Just as had happened with Will, the night before the c-section I was sure I wouldn't sleep at all. And just as with Will I slept soundly. I think the body just takes over and says "you have way too much to do to worry instead of sleep". I wish that would happen more often. We were up early the next morning and I got to cuddle Will for a little bit before we left. I gave him my pillow to sleep with since I was going to be gone for a few days. (He still has it.) I have to admit that I was pretty emotional. I felt like I was about to betray him a little. I knew I was about to change his world in a major way that he would not really understand. He had been the only little guy in our lives and he was about to lose that status. I would imagine most parents experience the same moments of sadness and guilt I felt when a new baby is about to come into the home. He mostly looked at me like I was very strange and went on as usual. He was more excited to go play at his friend Jake's house than anything else.
So we dropped Will off with our friend Julie and made our way to the hospital. Unlike our first delivery day, when we were extremely early, traffic snarled and we were actually late by about 15 minutes. I HATE being late, so that didn't help to calm me at all. But they took it in stride and immediately led us to the surgery prep room and began the ridiculously long paperwork. I forgot my wallet at home, which gave me another goose of adrenaline that I didn't need while wondering if they would send us home to retrieve it, which they did not thankfully.
I got changed and loaded onto the gurney (loaded is the closest I can come to describing what it is like to get a large woman carrying a child the size of a VW Bug onto a table just wide enough to hold Kate Moss) and then came my least favorite part of the ENTIRE day. I hate IVs. HATE them. My few and faithful regular readers have been informed of this fact on a couple of occasions now, and my hate has not lessened in the time since. But a miraculous thing happened. I got a nurse who was capable and NOT AT ALL BUBBLY. For those who know me at all, I am a talker. Get me nervous and I cross right over to a babbler, a nervous, non-stop, stream of consciousness spouter of nonsense. I always hope to have a happy, cheerful nurse to join in my babble, because I think it will help me. I learned that day how wrong I have been all this time. What I need to stay calm is someone who is older than me, extremely capable, calm, and not at all swayed or impressed by my babbling, constant questions, and whiny requests. The first couple of times she left the room to grab something I made comments to Eli about her lack of bedside manner. By the time she was putting in my IV I was grateful for her ability to intimidate me and her lack of interest in engaging in conversation. I know this seems backwards, and I certainly wouldn't want this particular personality to handle my recovery care, but God bless this woman for being the introvert she is. I sailed threw my IV and didn't even have the shakes.
The next 30 minutes or so was basically a waiting game. The anaesthesiologist stopped in to go over what she was going to do (In retrospect I did not pay enough attention to this discussion. More on that later.) and my doctor stopped in as well. On her way out to prep she asked us to guess about the weight. I can't remember what Eli and I guessed, other than we were both in the 10 lb range. Dr. V guessed 11 lb, 1oz, and I remember being a little pouty because I didn't want her thinking Ben was going to be so big. Boy was I in for a shock.
Finally it was time, and the nurses wheeled me into the operating room. The epidural was not nearly as scary this time, and I had the presence of mind to get situated on the table BEFORE I lost all feeling from the chest down. I remember more of the surgery this time, which isn't saying much considering with Will I was basically passed out most of the time. Other than having the shakes I was actually pretty comfortable. We had a few bad minutes just after they got Ben out. As a mom, you are just waiting to hear that first cry. Well, I didn't hear anything, and only knew he was out because I saw a nurse carry him over to the warmer. I kept asking if he was ok, and they would just say they were working on him. Eli was allowed over there so I knew they weren't in emergency mode yet, but it is still very scary to know something isn't right. It took a couple of minutes, but I finally heard that wonderful, mad little cry. They told me afterwards that he was completely non-responsive. His only sign of life was a heartbeat. No breathing, no muscle control, bad color, the works. They bagged him for a couple of minutes and roughed him up a little, and suddenly he got the hint and woke up. They watched him for another minute or two, but it was clear he was just slow to get going- again like his brother, if a little more dramatic. I once again thank God that Eli is both calm and very smart. He knew what was happening, and I know he was scared too, but he was a trooper and kept me calm and stood right there with our boy until he was ok.
Eli then got to follow the nurse out to the little room adjacent to the operating room to see Ben get weighed and measured. I couldn't see them to know when they came back in, and to be honest I was distracted by the fact that the Dr. was requesting some dye to insert into my bladder to make sure I didn't have a leak. Ben had compressed several of my internal organs and they just wanted to make sure I was in good working order. (I am.) Next thing I hear is one of the nurses saying "11, 12" and I wondered what they were counting. Turns out they were telling the room my son's weight. Yes, 11 POUNDS and 12 OUNCES. The entire room, including me and my doctor, began exclaiming over the size of this boy. No one was expecting an almost 12 lb baby.
So, the doctor was finishing up with me when I began to feel pretty nauseous. Remember that talk with the anaesthesiologist I should have paid more attention to? Well in that talk, she told me she would be giving me a cocktail of pain medicine along with the epidural to help manage my pain once the epidural wore off, which sounded fabulous to me. My mistake was not following up that information by asking what kind of cocktail. I cannot take pretty much any narcotic pain killer without getting very loopy and throwing up. Turns out my cocktail was Demerol and morphine, so on my way out of the operating room a nurse was holding one of those little crescent shaped bowls to my mouth so I could be sick. I spent the next 4 hours or so barely being able to keep my eyes open, except for every 15 minutes or so when I would get sick. I am very thankful for 2 things: first that you can't eat anything for 12 hours before surgery, and second, the the epidural kept me from feeling any of my stomach spasms.
After 4 hours of being a space cadet and being sick every 15 minutes (while also trying to hold and nurse my baby in between) I passed out for a couple of hours. When I woke up, I was clear-headed and my nausea was gone, but my right arm was swollen. Very swollen. Swollen like someone had hooked me up to a basketball pump and gone crazy. Turns out that sometime in my sleep I jarred my IV just enough that it wasn't flowing properly. Thankfully, they decided that I didn't have to have a new IV put in, so I just spent the next 12 hours wrapping towels around a very sore arm.
While all this was going on, I did still get a chance to examine my new little guy. Well, little is a relative term. Ben's hair was much lighter and there was less of it than his brother had at birth. He was fantastically chubby, quite pink, and his general expression at that point made him look like an angry trucker. He was beautiful. :)
The rest of the that hospital stay was pretty uneventful. Despite the my disaster of a delivery day, I actually recovered very quickly, and was up walking around without much discomfort the next morning. I was evidently doing quite well the next day- the on-call doctor had to recheck my chart to verify that I had in fact had a c-section, because I wasn't acting like I had. My dad came in that weekend and braved taking care of Will overnight on his own that first night for us. Eli brought Will to see us on Sunday, and I will be forever grateful that my Dad had the video camera going when Will saw his brother for the first time. I could not have asked for a sweeter introduction if I had choreographed it. Will was instantly in love and climbed right onto the bed with us and gave his brother a big kiss.
So much for being brief- but this may be my one opportunity to write all of this down, and I don't want to neglect details for the sake of brevity. There is much more to tell, and I will try to get another chapter in our saga written before another 5 months passes by.
Eli then got to follow the nurse out to the little room adjacent to the operating room to see Ben get weighed and measured. I couldn't see them to know when they came back in, and to be honest I was distracted by the fact that the Dr. was requesting some dye to insert into my bladder to make sure I didn't have a leak. Ben had compressed several of my internal organs and they just wanted to make sure I was in good working order. (I am.) Next thing I hear is one of the nurses saying "11, 12" and I wondered what they were counting. Turns out they were telling the room my son's weight. Yes, 11 POUNDS and 12 OUNCES. The entire room, including me and my doctor, began exclaiming over the size of this boy. No one was expecting an almost 12 lb baby.
So, the doctor was finishing up with me when I began to feel pretty nauseous. Remember that talk with the anaesthesiologist I should have paid more attention to? Well in that talk, she told me she would be giving me a cocktail of pain medicine along with the epidural to help manage my pain once the epidural wore off, which sounded fabulous to me. My mistake was not following up that information by asking what kind of cocktail. I cannot take pretty much any narcotic pain killer without getting very loopy and throwing up. Turns out my cocktail was Demerol and morphine, so on my way out of the operating room a nurse was holding one of those little crescent shaped bowls to my mouth so I could be sick. I spent the next 4 hours or so barely being able to keep my eyes open, except for every 15 minutes or so when I would get sick. I am very thankful for 2 things: first that you can't eat anything for 12 hours before surgery, and second, the the epidural kept me from feeling any of my stomach spasms.
After 4 hours of being a space cadet and being sick every 15 minutes (while also trying to hold and nurse my baby in between) I passed out for a couple of hours. When I woke up, I was clear-headed and my nausea was gone, but my right arm was swollen. Very swollen. Swollen like someone had hooked me up to a basketball pump and gone crazy. Turns out that sometime in my sleep I jarred my IV just enough that it wasn't flowing properly. Thankfully, they decided that I didn't have to have a new IV put in, so I just spent the next 12 hours wrapping towels around a very sore arm.
While all this was going on, I did still get a chance to examine my new little guy. Well, little is a relative term. Ben's hair was much lighter and there was less of it than his brother had at birth. He was fantastically chubby, quite pink, and his general expression at that point made him look like an angry trucker. He was beautiful. :)
The rest of the that hospital stay was pretty uneventful. Despite the my disaster of a delivery day, I actually recovered very quickly, and was up walking around without much discomfort the next morning. I was evidently doing quite well the next day- the on-call doctor had to recheck my chart to verify that I had in fact had a c-section, because I wasn't acting like I had. My dad came in that weekend and braved taking care of Will overnight on his own that first night for us. Eli brought Will to see us on Sunday, and I will be forever grateful that my Dad had the video camera going when Will saw his brother for the first time. I could not have asked for a sweeter introduction if I had choreographed it. Will was instantly in love and climbed right onto the bed with us and gave his brother a big kiss.
So much for being brief- but this may be my one opportunity to write all of this down, and I don't want to neglect details for the sake of brevity. There is much more to tell, and I will try to get another chapter in our saga written before another 5 months passes by.
